The lasting impact of a mother at Christmas

The way we meet this moment matters

“I like your tablecloth,” my mom said to me the other day as I smoothed the dryer-wrinkled fabric decorated with chickadees, evergreen boughs, and holly.

Strange, I suppose, considering that my mother has been dead for twenty-five years.

But in the moment, it was also very real: I absolutely heard my dead mother compliment my tablecloth.

Well, maybe “heard” is the wrong word: after a quarter-century, her actual voice is hard for me to remember exactly. It’s more that I felt her say it. Maybe this makes no sense to you, but if you have a long-lost loved one who follows you around in the world, it probably makes all the sense in the world.

Because she does follow me, my mother, but more subtly these days than when she first died in November of 1999 and I was the young mother of a toddler and newborn.

So much has happened since then: she never met three of my five children, she never saw most of the places I’ve lived, wasn’t around to see me reinvent my life in a hundred small ways and a handful of big ones. My life went on, while her involvement in it permanently stalled.

So I still think of her often, but in a much-less-present way than I used to - most of the time. Not at Christmas, though. This time of year, Mom is everywhere: in the songs on my Christmas playlist, the movies I watch, the Hershey’s Kisses that make their way to the candy bowl on the counter and the stockings and the tops of cookies.

And while you might think I’d think less and less about my mother at Christmas the more years that go by, if anything, in recent years I’ve been feeling with me her more intently. Maybe that’s because, at 47, I identify more with my mother toward the end of her life than I was able to in my 20s. She was fifty-five when she died, not all that much older than I am now. And the Christmases when I remember my mother best were the ones when she was in her forties and had older kids. Just like me.

As a young mother, I don’t think I really noticed my mother’s impact on my holiday experiences. I simply acted on what I’d learned without giving it much thought. I’m more aware now, with each passing year, of how my mother’s influence has shaped my holiday experiences and, by extension, those of my children - even those who never knew her. It makes me more aware of my own influence and importance, even as my kids one by one grow up and leave home.

My mother loved Christmas, ergo, I love Christmas, ergo, I now have four adult children and one almost-adult child who love Christmas. These things are not unrelated.

This can be a complicated time of year for relationships with our mothers (yes, even those who have passed.) Even though part of me wishes more than anything that my mom was still here to experience Christmas with my siblings and children and I, I try to hold empathetic space for my friends who have difficult relationships with their moms or who feel mostly frustrated with their mothers this time of year. (For those of you who, like me, have lost your mom, the most recent episode of

Calm Christmas by Beth Kempton

has some lovely ideas for honoring her.)

Meanwhile, my mother is frozen in time, no longer here to bring me either irritation or joy except in my imagination. But even as everyday memories of her fade into the background, her impact remains. And at Christmas, the evidence is everywhere.

In my book, I wrote this about my mother:

Mom and I had a complicated relationship toward the end of her life, and even toward the end of my childhood. She struggled with addiction and depression, and my siblings and I all felt the impacts of that struggle. Yet I can look back now and recognize the myriad ways her values and priorities influenced my siblings and I for the better. If my mother still has that large of an impact on me twenty-five years after her death, can’t I also hope that my own kids will forgive my missteps and mistakes and remember their childhoods with fondness?

Most of us, it seems, spend much of our lives trying to make sense of our relationships with our mothers. And now, as my own children grow up, I’m left with the unsettling realization that they will spend the rest of their lives trying to make sense of their relationship with me. How I rise to the occasion matters.

I can’t say what an actual Christmas would be like with my mom still in it. Probably full of frustration and conflict, actually. And yet, that conflict and frustration would help shape me and my holidays just as much as the magic and music I nostalgically remember from my childhood shape it today. Maybe the reason mothers can be so frustrating this time of year is that their impact looms so large.

When I watch my kids reflexively do things the same way I do, when I see how much they cling to the smallest parts of our holiday traditions and the excitement they clearly experience in the lead-up, it’s clear to me how much what I have brought to the holiday experience matters. And I don’t think it has much to do with my baking skills (unremarkable), decorating ability (lacking), gift-wrapping skills (too much tape, not enough dexterity), or even the gifts themselves, which have become markedly less exciting as my kids have outgrown toys.

It’s more about the attitude I bring to it, I think, than any specific thing I do. My mother loved Christmas, ergo, I love Christmas, ergo, I now have four adult children and one almost-adult child who love Christmas. I do not think these things are unrelated. And maybe this is why, since losing my mother, Christmas has felt so important to me.

Perhaps it’s not about doing anything perfectly, or checking all the boxes, or getting the perfect gifts. Perhaps it’s more about demonstrating humor and good cheer and simply showing up, even when we’re a little stressed and sleep-deprived, so we can help our own children see that this is a time of year to be marked, celebrated, and remembered.

It’s an occasion, friends, and how we rise to the occasion matters. Perfection is not the point; only presence. My mother’s continued presence this time of year is proof of that.

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Final thoughts: a new look at Christmas music

Christmas is just a few days away now, and there’s a delicious sort of surrender in realizing that the season is what it is, for better or for worse. Some of my most ambitious plans are simply not going to come together at this point, and that allows me to relax - while acknowledging, of course, that there’s still the possibility of pulling off a little bit of last-minute magic.

It’s always this inflection point where I find myself leaning in most to Christmas movies and music: no matter how disorganized this particular holiday season has been, there’s always time to put on a movie, album, or playlist. And is it at all surprising that the Christmas music I grew up listening to - Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte - favors heavily in my current-day rotation? But there is always room to branch out, too, and you can do this from the comfort of your sofa even when all the stores have closed.

In an effort to create holiday magic for myself, this year I’ve been spending more time listening to new, and new-to-me Christmas music. While over the years I’ve let household crowd-pleasers mostly dictate my holiday-listening habits. Spending so much more time listening solo opens up a lot of possibilities. What if I listened to nothing but haunting Celtic winter tunes sung by Loreena McKennit for an entire gift-wrapping session? Or the Tabernacle Choir singing The Messiah beginning to end? How about that totally ‘80s “A Very Special Christmas” album that we had on cassette when I was a kid, and used to listen to on repeat for the duration of every December road trip? I’m finding myself exploring holiday tunes I’d forgotten and relishing new voices - plus, when I’m listening alone it’s a lot easier to indulge in tears when the mood strikes. And when I’m listening to Christmas music, the mood very often strikes.

This will be my last post until after Christmas, but here are a few other holiday-related posts I’ve written this year in case you’re looking for more thoughts about Christmas motherhood from a mom of bigger kids:

I hope your celebrations are peaceful, joyful, and full of the spirit of the season, and that you’re surrounded by the people you love most. Until next time, friend.

Warmly,

Meagan